The kingdom rejected, Luke 14:1-14

One of the most important Jewish social events in the time of Christ was a dinner get together, or banquet or wedding feast.  It was not only a time of socializing and sharing food with relatives, friends and neighbors, but it was also a structured event that delineated the social pecking order of the community. In this passage, Jesus is invited to such an event on the Sabbath day at the house of a prominent Pharisee. That means he was probably a rich man, who was at the top of the pecking order of that community.  The text says that lawyers were there as well.  So it was a very prestigious event for Jesus to be invited to, especially considering the antagonism that the Pharisees had towards Jesus.  I can almost imagine the disciples were whispering among themselves that they hoped Jesus would behave there, and not say anything to embarrass them.  But the fact is, Jesus knows the motives of the Pharisees, and He knows that He is being set up.  But interestingly, He goes anyhow, and uses this event as an opportunity to teach some important principles concerning the kingdom of God.

In some respects, Luke has positioned this event in such a way as to continue to answer the question Jesus posed in the previous chapter, particularly vs. 18, where Jesus asked, “What is the kingdom of God like, and to what shall I compare it?”  He answered that rhetorical question by giving a parable of a mustard seed that grew into a large tree, and the birds nested in it’s branches.  He was comparing the kingdom of God with a false kingdom which  grows abnormally large, and instead of bringing forth fruit, it becomes a nesting place for the doctrines of demons and false prophets who find refuge in it’s branches.  It was a picture of what had happened to Israel which was supposed to be the manifestation of the kingdom as the chosen people of God, but who through the ages had perverted the word of God and the prophets and had become a home of self serving, self righteous religious leaders who laid heavy burdens on the people and bound them up with all sorts of traditions and false teachings, while they themselves profited from their exalted positions.

Now the kingdom of God is also a reference to the future church.  As you know, when Jesus came preaching the kingdom, for the most part the Jews rejected His gospel.  And consequently, not long after Pentecost, the temple was destroyed, God’s judgment  and wrath was poured out on the Jewish nation, and entrance to the kingdom of God was extended to the Gentiles, which brought about what we call the church age which has continued up to our day.

Perhaps it is helpful to see the kingdom of God as coming in stages.  It was initially promised to Abraham, and given birth through his seed which produced the 12 tribes of Israel.  They received the word of God at Mt. Sinai through Moses, and then eventually went into the promised land of Canaan.  But at that point it didn’t take long for the people to start rejecting the kingdom of God.  In fact, they said “give us a king to rule over us like the other nations.”  And so over the next 1500 years they rebelled against God time after time, whoring after false idols, intermarrying with pagan nations, rejecting the word of God given through the prophets.  So God allowed them to be overrun by their enemies, and the temple was destroyed, Solomon’s palaces were left in ruins, and the people were taken into captivity.  By the time Jesus comes on the scene, they have returned once again to their land, but they are still subjugated by other nations and their rebuilt temple is but a shell of it’s former glory.  And yet they still are a stiff necked people. They still have hearts that are proud and rebellious.  Yet at the same time, they have developed a religious system of Judaism which claims to be true to God’s law, but in fact their hearts are far from it.

So when Jesus comes on the scene, He recognizes this, for He knows their hearts.  And yet in the compassion and mercy of God He continues to reach out to them with the truth of the gospel.  He is preaching that the kingdom of God is at hand.  They don’t really understand what that means.  They think that it refers to a return to the restoration of former glories that they enjoyed under King David and Solomon.  And they think that the Messiah is going to overthrow Roman oppression and then sit on the throne of David and then the Jews will rule the world.

But contrary to that nationalistic view, what Jesus has been preaching is that the way into the kingdom of God is narrow and few there be that find it.  He has been preaching that the way into the kingdom of God is individually by repentance from sin; it’s a matter of the heart, not a matter of your nationality, or your political persuasion, or your social standing, or even if you are a moral, law abiding citizen.

What they fail to realize is that the kingdom of God would be a spiritual kingdom which was announced by John the Baptist, and through Jesus Christ the Son of God the kingdom was inaugurated,  but it would be a spiritual kingdom  which would be administrated through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of His citizens. And then one day in the future the kingdom of God will be consummated when Jesus Christ will return in glory for His bride the church at the end of the ages.

So what they failed to realize is that in rejecting the gospel of Jesus Christ, they were opting out of the kingdom of God, in fact they were denied entrance into the kingdom and God would open the way for the Gentiles to be grafted into the kingdom.  But what we, the church, need to understand is that we are being grafted in because they did not bear fruit.  They were pictured in the last chapter as the fig tree that the owner of the vineyard came to year after year, expecting to find fruit and yet did not.  And the vineyard caretaker said give it one more year, and let’s dig around the roots and fertilize it, and then if it doesn’t bear fruit, cut it down.  So it is incumbent that the church bear fruit as well, or else it too will be cut down.

So I believe that this is what is being illustrated in the first half of this chapter.  Jesus has given a series of warnings, parables and metaphors, all designed to confront the pride and implacability of the Jews who were confident in their self righteousness that the kingdom of God belonged to them by birthright.  And Jesus is challenging that assumption and convicting them of their sin.

Now in the Old Testament and even in the New Testament, there is a persistent theme of the consummation of the kingdom of God being like a wedding feast, or a great dinner celebration.  In Revelation it is called the marriage supper of the Lamb.  This is a common theme and one that Jesus often uses to describe the final stage of the  kingdom, or the consummation of the kingdom.  Look back at chapter 12, vs. 36 where Jesus is speaking of the day of His second coming; “Be like men who are waiting for their master when he returns from the wedding feast, so that they may immediately open the door to him when he comes and knocks.  Blessed are those slaves whom the master will find on the alert when he comes; truly I say to you, that he will gird himself to serve, and have them recline at the table, and will come up and wait on them.”

So as we look at the first half of this chapter, I think that Jesus uses the opportunity of this dinner at a prominent Pharisee’s house to speak about the kingdom of God from the perspective of a feast which all of them were participating in to some degree at the Pharisees house.  And we should take a cue from Jesus here in regards to personal evangelism.  Jesus was a master of using daily incidents and commonplace events to bring about an opportunity to share the gospel. And that is how we should evangelize as well, in the course of our daily lives and interactions with coworkers or acquaintances.  I hope you all realize that the multiplication of the kingdom is dependent upon you.   I think that there is a misconception among modern Christians that evangelism is the duty of the pastor.  But I would remind you that Ephesians 4:11 says that God gave to the church pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints (that’s you) for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ (that’s the church).  So I hope you don’t think that because you don’t teach or lead singing or whatever that you don’t have a contribution to make to the church.  Your job is to come to church to be equipped so that you might return to your workplace, your neighborhood, your families and so forth and you might do the work of bringing others to salvation, and ultimately build up the church.

 So Jesus is invited to the house of a prominent Pharisee on the Sabbath day and He is going to use this as an opportunity to evangelize them.  And what is immediately apparent is that it is a set up.  The Pharisees have arranged to have a person there that is in need of healing, and they want to see if He will heal on the Sabbath day so that they can use that against Him to discredit Him.

Now Luke tells us that this man was suffering from dropsy which is an old fashioned word for edema.  Edema is a condition characterized by swelling due to the buildup of fluid in the body, resulting in the enlargement of organs, skin, or other body parts.  So the man was literally drowning in his own bodily fluids.  Now the Pharisees just conveniently happen to have this guy there at this home, and vs. 1 says they were watching Jesus closely to see what He would do.

Vs. 3, “And Jesus answered and spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?’ But they kept silent. And He took hold of him and healed him, and sent him away.”  Now a couple of things are noteworthy here.  First of all, the silence on the part of the lawyers and Pharisees indicate that they are complicit in this scheme to catch Jesus breaking the law.  And not only is it the house of a prominent Pharisee, but He has also invited lawyers there who are well versed in the law and can act as judges concerning whatever Jesus decides to do.

Well, Jesus knows He is being set up, but in spite of that He is compassionate.  So He heals the man with dropsy and then sent him away.  And the fact that Jesus sends him away shows that the man had no other reason to be there other than He had been brought there to set up Jesus.  But Jesus heals him anyway, and then addresses the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and lawyers.

Vs. 5, “And He said to them, ‘Which one of you will have a son or an ox fall into a well, and will not immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day?’ And they could make no reply to this.”  They could not reply without incriminating themselves, that’s why they don’t answer.  They know that first of all there was no law regarding healing on the Sabbath day.  And secondly, they knew that if they had a son that fell into a well, they would all have quickly done whatever was necessary to save their son.

But this man, this poor Jewish man that they had drug from off the street to use to catch Jesus in some infraction of the law - they had no mercy for him.  They could care less that he was drowning in his own bodily fluids and needed saving.  Their only concern was to preserve their self righteousness and their power in the community.

So this passage is another illustration of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.  Remember in chapter 12 vs.1, Jesus started his sermon by saying, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.”  And then further into His message in chapter 12vs. 56 He says, “You hypocrites! You know how to analyze the appearance of the earth and the sky, but why do you not analyze this present time?” Then again in chapter 13 He calls the synagogue official a hypocrite for rebuking Him for healing on the Sabbath.

But the point here is not to produce a sermon on the law of Sabbath keeping.  Jesus said in Luke 6:5 that the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.  He said in Mark 2:27 that man was not made for the Sabbath, but that the Sabbath was made for man.  No, the point that Jesus is making is that the Pharisees are guilty of the sin of hypocrisy.  Jesus is pinpointing their particular, glaring sin that they didn’t think was evident. Hypocrisy masks sin behind a charade of righteousness.   They prided themselves on keeping the law, but in fact they were guilty of the sin of hypocrisy.

What is the sin of hypocrisy?  It is the sin of false witness.  It is having an evil heart, but masking it in a show of self righteousness and religious ritual.  It is putting on a show of righteousness, but inwardly having a heart full of greed and pride and selfishness.  It’s having an unregenerate heart.  Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

You may not know your heart, but God knows it.  I Cor. 4:5 says that one day God will disclose the motives of men’s hearts.  And isn’t that what Jesus said in chapter 12? That the day will come when what has been whispered in the inner room will be shouted from the rooftops.  God knows the hearts of man, and one day He will disclose your motives. This is the sin of hypocrisy.  James says in chapter 2 vs. 4, because you have made distinctions among yourselves,  you have become judges with evil motives.  And he says in chapter 4 vs. 3, “you ask and you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.”

So Jesus is making the case that these Pharisees and lawyers were excluded from the kingdom because they had unconfessed sin in their hearts which they covered up by self righteous acts to be seen of men. In Matt. 6:1 in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.” Listen, beware of doing your works to be seen of men!  That is the sin of hypocrisy and it is a damning sin in the eyes of God.  The world may be fooled by your hypocrisy for a while, but it is seen by the eyes of God. Beware of publicizing your religious deeds while in your heart harboring evil.  This is the season of Lent and people love to proclaim what they are giving up for God.  They give up ice cream or chocolate and think that somehow this is a way of chalking up credits with God.  They proclaim that they are fasting by marking their foreheads with an ashen cross and think that they are scoring points in the kingdom.  And they forget that Jesus said when you fast, wash your face and change your clothes and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.  God sees the heart and He weighs the motives of men’s hearts and He hates hypocrisy.

Now in continuation of this principle Jesus gives a parable about trying to get the choice seat at a banquet – something that undoubtedly was in practice at that very dinner party.  The invitees would be jockeying for the favored positions at the table.  Please understand that Jesus is not simply giving us an etiquette lesson here about dinner parties. That’s what a lot of people think that this is saying.  But the point of what Jesus is saying is revealed in vs. 11, “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Look at the parable for a moment.  People in that day were seated at dinner in a large U shape configuration.  And the host sat in the middle of the U and then everyone was seated either to his right or left in descending order of importance.  That’s why James and John’s mother asked Jesus if her sons could sit on either side of Him in the consummation of the kingdom.  It meant that they were the favored ones, or the most distinguished guests.  So Jesus is saying when you go to a banquet, don’t take the first  seat of prominence, because the host may designate someone else for that honor, and you will have to move to the last place.  But rather go to the last place and then the host may invite you to come to the first place of honor.

Now once again I reiterate that Jesus isn’t interested in teaching etiquette, though it would certainly be proper etiquette to do as He said.  But what Jesus wants to emphasize through this parable is that those that are humble will be exalted in the kingdom of heaven.  He said something similar at the end of the last chapter; Luke 13:30,  “And behold, some are last who will be first and some are first who will be last.”  But look back at chapter 13 for a moment and the verses immediately preceding that statement starting in vs. 28,  “In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but yourselves being thrown out.  And they will come from east and west and from north and south, and will recline at the table in the kingdom of God.”  He is talking about the wedding feast at the consummation of the kingdom of God, and that the Jews will be thrown out, they will be refused admission, while others from around the world will be seated at the table.

And why were they excluded?  Because they rejected the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel of repentance from sin.  They didn’t think that they needed a Savior because they thought they were keepers of the law, they recognized the one true God, they were circumcised, they kept the Sabbath and worshipped in the temple.  Yet they were not  saved because they never accepted that they were lost and had repented of their sins and trusted in the Savior for their forgiveness.  I wonder how many people in the church today are in that same situation?  They try to be good moral people, they believe in God, they have been baptized, they come to church most Sundays and they sing worship songs, but yet they are unsaved because they have never come to the point of recognizing that they are lost sinners who deserve God’s judgment and repented of their sins and asked for forgiveness and a new life in Christ.  All they have done is just add religious activities to a sinful heart.

Jesus established the characteristics of the citizen of the kingdom of God in Matthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, the humble, for they shall inherit the earth.”  He was saying that the way into the kingdom is by recognizing your spiritual bankruptcy, mourning over your sinful condition, and humbling yourself in repentance before God.

So not only hypocrites would be rejected from the kingdom, but the proud and self righteous would be rejected, those that refused to humble themselves in repentance.  And then thirdly, Jesus gives another characteristic of the kingdom, which is hospitality.  Look at vs. 12, “And He also went on to say to the one who had invited Him, ‘When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, otherwise they may also invite you in return and that will be your repayment.  But when you give a reception, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, since they do not have the means to repay you; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

Now once again, Jesus isn’t giving us wedding party etiquette or banquet etiquette.  And neither is He making an unequivocal statement that you are not to ever invite your family or friends over to dinner.  I guess if you want to use this as a proof text to not have to have your in laws over for Thanksgiving dinner that is your call, but I don’t think that is what Jesus is teaching here.

It’s the same principle as the chief seats at the  banquet.  He is speaking against the principle of reciprocation.  Of you rub my back and I’ll rub yours.  That was a fact of life for the Pharisees and the Jews in general in Jesus’ day, and it is a fact of life in our day as well.  Don’t just do good to those that can do good to you.  Don’t just love those that love you back.  But the commandment of God is to love our enemies.  Because we are to be as Christ was to us.

These men there that day were enemies of Christ and He knew it.  He knew that some of these very men would be the ones calling for His crucifixion in a few months.  And yet He is extending to them the gospel.  He is offering them a chance to repent and be saved, even though He knows that in their hearts they are His enemies.

That is the grace of God though isn’t it? Romans 5:10 says, “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” Though the Pharisees did not see it, they were enemies of God because they rejected the gospel of Jesus Christ.  But as Romans makes it clear, we are all enemies of God.  Our fleshly nature is at war with God’s nature;  our will is at odds with God’s will. By nature we are all hypocrites; even when we try to do good we do so with wrong motives and our hearts are evil.  By nature we are not humble, but we are proud, boastful and elbow and climb over anyone and everyone in order to get the choice seats, the places of prominence, in order to get the promotion, or the next sale.  By nature we are inhospitable; we are only nice to those who can reciprocate, who can return the favor.

The problem isn’t that we need to grab ourselves by our bootstraps and pull ourselves up, or that we need to try to turn over a new leaf, or that we need to try to do better, but the problem is that we have an evil nature.  This is really what Jesus is illustrating.  As I said last week, you can’t bring forth fruit unless you first are made into a fruit tree.  Jesus said earlier in  Luke 6:44, “For each tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they pick grapes from a briar bush.”

See, the problem is not something that we can fix ourselves.  We need to be changed from being a thorn bush to a fig tree, and then we can produce the fruit of a fig tree.  And according to the gospel the only way to be changed is to repent of who and what you are.  Repent of your sins and ask God for forgiveness through the blood of Jesus Christ which was shed for remission of your sins.  And when through faith the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses you from all sin, then God sends His Spirit to dwell in our hearts and give us new life in Him.  We become a new creature, old things are passed away.  And only then in the power of this new life in Christ are we able to be the children of God, citizens of the kingdom of God, set apart to do good works.  This is the gospel, the new covenant, when according to Ezek. 36:26 God “will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.”

Listen, the gospel of Jesus Christ is founded on repentance and faith in Christ which produces regeneration – a new life in Christ.  The gospel of Jesus Christ is not subject to some other version that you like better or that isn’t quite so restricting.  It is a gospel that was formed before the foundation of the world to redeem a bride for Christ.  It’s not open to interpretation or modification.  Jesus said in Luke 13:24, “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.”  There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is far from it.  Few there be that find the way into the kingdom of heaven.  It is a narrow door.  It is a door that requires that you bow down on your knees in repentance before God and ask for forgiveness and to be made new, to create a clean heart in you.  I trust that you do not reject Him today.  Let’s pray.